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Low Key

'Undone': Let's Try to Interpret Amazon's Animated Achievement

Season 1, Ep. 43

How to interpret Amazon's acclaimed animated series "Undone"?


The series is about a 28-year-old woman named Alma (Rosa Salazar) who suffers a serious car accident and develops the ability to communicate with her long-dead father Jacob (Bob Odenkirk). She also becomes unstuck in time, and learns to bounce back and forth across decades to try to understand how her father died.


The show leaves many questions open, including whether Anna is really traveling through time, or suffering from a serious mental illness. The show, which reminds us of Richard Linklater's "A Scanner Darkly," occupies an interesting place between real-life and dreams. It makes you appreciate life, reality, and the ability to tell reality from dreams.


Every week on "Low Key" we talk about pop-culture subtleties we think others may have missed, and "Undone" leaves a lot of details open to interpretation. Everyone in the supporting cast feels human and compelling, and almost everyone has ethically troubling secrets. Alma has to not only decipher what's happening in her own mind, but also in everyone else's. 


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